In previous versions of EOP quarantine access was only available at the administrator level. Now individual mail users will be able to access their own quarantine to manage spam via the EAC web interface. Users must have a valid Office 365 user ID and password in order to access the spam quarantine page. For current Exchange online subscribers, users should already be able to access their spam quarantine with their current user ID and password. EOP only subscribers can utilize Directory Synchronization and password sync to automate access for their end users.

Directory-based edge blocking

DBEB allows organizations to reject messages for invalid recipients at the network perimeter. DBEB will block all messages sent to an email address that isn’t present in the Azure Active Directory.

View message traces up to 90 days

Admins can now request message trace information for up to 90 days. Message traces for the past seven days can be viewed immediately.

Remote PowerShell

EOP customers now have the ability to use remote PowerShell to manage Exchange Online Protection settings and use PowerShell scripting to automate a variety of management tasks.

OWA Junk mail reporting

Easily report junk mail back to Microsoft EOP team. Users can report a false negative or positive back to Microsoft by right-clicking within the mail message and selecting ‘mark as junk’ or ‘mark as not junk’. This will help improve the spam filtering capabilities of Exchange Online Protection.

Microsoft recently announced updates to OneDrive for Business, previously called SkyDrive Pro. As part of this announcement, Microsoft offers some enticing advantages that make OneDrive for Business your cloud based solution of choice:

Storage has been increased from 25 GB to 1 TB per user

OneDrive for Business can be purchased as part of an Office 365 plan or as a stand-alone solution

Most Office 365 plans already include OneDrive for Business

Those plans that do not include OneDrive for Business are eligible to receive exceptional promotional pricing

Migration assistance is available

OneDrive for business offers one solution that provides organizations all the tools essential to collaborate virtually. OneDrive for Business is a file sync and share software designed to allow users to access documents from anywhere in the world, from multiple devices, among multiple users; collaborating with colleagues in real time, all through a reliable and secure service offered by Microsoft.

As Corporate Vice President John Case stated, "The cloud is about breaking down walls between people and information. Not building a new set of islands in the sky. Make sure you bet on a file sync and share solution that helps you embrace that."

There have been a growing number of stories related to government surveillance of internet data in recent days. Our customers have taken notice and we have heard a number of concerns related to the privacy of their data in Microsoft’s Cloud.

While we share in these concerns, the bottom line is Microsoft is doing everything they can to keep your data safe. More importantly, there is no indication that any of Microsoft’s data has been breached by the government. We are told that on the business platforms, Microsoft has had only a handful of requests to share data with the government and was able to work with clients to provide notice and assistance in the vast majority of the cases.

In recent days we have had a lot of questions from clients who were concerned their information may have been compromised in Office 365 by the HeartBleed vulnerability. This flaw allows intruders to read server memory which would contain usernames, passwords, credit cards, or any other confidential information that may be on the server running OpenSSL. We wanted to take a minute to reassure you that Office 365 and out of the box Microsoft configurations are not affected.

The Heartbleed vulnerability is specific to OpenSSL which is not being used for any Microsoft Office 365 services. In fact, all Microsoft servers (Windows Server 2003 through Windows Server 2012 R2) do not utilize OpenSSL out of the box and use their own encryption component called Secure Channel (or SChannel which you may have seen errors in your event log for). Unless you have installed Apache or some other third-party application that uses OpenSSL on your Windows Server, you should be fine. Microsoft will continue actively monitor the security of Office 365 with threat modeling and attack surface analysis. We continue to believe security is a benefit of the Microsoft cloud services that goes above and beyond what a typical business can do and it is not a weakness.

March 27th Microsoft officially released the long anticipated Microsoft Office for IPad. Found in the Apple App store under three separate apps:

Microsoft PowerPoint for IPad

Microsoft Word for IPad

Microsoft Excel for IPad

Available for any user as a view only offering, subscribers of the following Office 365 plans can edit files.

Microsoft Home

Office 365 Small Business Premium

Office 365 Midsize Business

Office 365 E3 and E4 (Enterprise and Government)

Office 365 Education A3 and A4

Office 365 ProPlus,

Office 365 University

Office 365 Personal – Available Spring 2014.

One thing to note:

When you're trying to connect the Office apps to an existing Office 365 account, don't use the option from the 'Buy Office 365' screen that asks if you want to use an existing account. This option only works if you're using the same mail address for Office 365 and the iTunes store. If you're using a separate Office 365 account, first open an Office app as a free file viewer and then choose the Activate option. This is where you can enter Office 365 account details to activate the apps. Once you've activated one app, the rest are automatically activated and ready to go.

The apps offer services to tie in; SharePoint, OneDrive and OneDrive for Business ease of access to both personal and business files while on the go!

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